She says if the court action is allowed to go forward, it will likely take two to three months to decide.

Kleeb says the state’s attorneys are arguing the landowners should have no say in the case.

“The state of Nebraska essentially said because the citizens are not a pipeline company and because the citizens are not a state agency, that they therefore have no standing to bring this case forward,” Kleeb says, “but obviously, there are landowners affected by the pipeline and there are taxpayers, so there’s lots of legal reasons why they’re bringing the case forward.”

Keystone XL is a $7-billion, 1,700-mile project to take crude oil form the tar sands of western Canada to refineries along the Gulf Coast in Texas.